THE GREAT WAR--A CENTURY AGO . . .

I think he is referring to your quoting Romeo.

This is SM U-1, the first submarine of the Austro-Hungarian Navy. Georg Ritter von Trapp, pater familias of the Trapp Family singers, was an Austrian naval hero who served in the submarine service.

Brown says at 11:35 in the video-
"A little group from the Foreign Office asked me if I was interested in joining the diplomatic corps and I said I was, and they said 'Right we'll send you to Germany for 6 months"

41:05- "My experience with the Germans before the war was a very friendly one. I admired them for their disciplined way of life, they were hard workers. But my attitude totally changed when I witnessed what I did in Belsen because I thought "If these people are capable of this, they're just an evil race"

The little prick ought to get up to speed on history.

Well who ran the concentration camps if the nazis didn't?

In Germany, of course the nazis. In the Philippines the USA, in Guatemala the USA, in Vietnam the USA, in Korea the USA, in Indonesia, the USA, in ... The USA.

Thanks for the recommendation. I was at the library today and looked it up. Yep, an electronic download available AND an audio book available. Of actual books, there were none. They probably tossed it off for a dollar in one of their annual discard sales. There is much wrong with the world today.

Tomorrow (new monthly budget) it's off to Amazon.

Today is Canada Day, the national holiday. Most Canadian historians see the First World War as being the time when Canada "came of age" as a nation. Certainly Canada paid a huge price--more than 63,000 dead from a nation of seven million people. (To put that into perspective, that would have been as though the United States had suffered almost 950,000 killed in that war--as it was, American war deaths were just over 116,000.)

So in honor of Canada, i thought we might look at a gentler product of the Canadian war effort. In 1914, Lt. Harry Colebourn was travelling by train to the east to ship out to England. In White River, Ontario, he purchased a black bear cub from a trapper for $20 (quite a jackpot for the trapper). He named her Winnie, in honor of his adopted home town of Winnipeg. Colebourn's regiment, the Fort Garry Horse, adopted Winnie as a mascot, and smuggled her to England. When they were about to ship out for France, Colebourn found a home for her at the London Zoo. It was there that A. A. Milne and his son Christopher Robin saw Winnie, and, as is too often said, the rest is history.



Harry Colebourn with Winnie on Salisbury Plain in England, 1914.

Canada and the First World War

... and happy Canada Day!

Thanks, Boss . . . i'll tell The Girl, too . . .

Are there any photos or eyewitness accounts to prove it?
And who exactly were imprisoned in the camps?
Which camps were inside the US?

Vera Brittain became a dedicated diarist in about 1912. Although she did not publish her journals or discuss them during her long and public life, her diaries have been published now in a narrative form. As the great maw of the trenches swallowed the men she knew, Vera volunteered to work in hospitals, and eventually took nurses training. (She was a very diminutive woman, and was originally told that she probably couldn't do the work.) She was eventually sent out to Malta.



A great stride forward in treating those wounded in battle was the motorized ambulance. My grandfather was a part of an ambulance crew, and was among the first American soldiers to arrive in France--they were sent over before the combat troops to serve behind British and French lines. Other Americans drove ambulances, such as Walt Disney (pictured below), who had been rejected by the army as underage, but who joined the Red Cross.



Ernest Hemingway also joined the Red Cross and was sent to Italy, where he served for two months before being wounded.

Thanks for the Ernest Hemingway photo. I've visited his home in Cuba, and your picture lead me to the site with many Hemingway photos with one that's now hanging in his home in Cuba.

My photo shows to much background reflection.

This is a pretty well known song, but this version by June Tabor just blows me away, every time I hear it.

For those without Youtube, the lyrics are printed out below.








Oh how do you do, young Willy McBride
Do you mind if I sit here down by your graveside
And rest for a while in the warm summer sun
I've been walking all day, and I'm nearly done
And I see by your gravestone you were only nineteen
When you joined the great fallen in 1916
Well I hope you died quick
And I hope you died clean
Or Willy McBride, was is it slow and obscene

Did they beat the drums slowly
Did they play the fife lowly
Did the rifles fire o'er you as they lowered you down
Did the band play the last post and chorus
Did the pipes play the flowers of the forest

And did you leave a wife or a sweetheart behind
In some loyal heart is your memory enshrined
And though you died back in 1916
To that loyal heart you're forever nineteen
Or are you a stranger without even a name
Forever enshrined behind some old glass pane
In an old photograph torn, tattered, and stained
And faded to yellow in a brown leather frame

Did they beat the drums slowly
Did they play the fife lowly
Did the rifles fire o'er you as they lowered you down
Did the band play the last post and chorus
Did the pipes play the flowers of the forest

The sun shining down on these green fields of France
The warm wind blows gently and the red poppies dance
The trenches have vanished long under the plow
No gas, no barbed wire, no guns firing now
But here in this graveyard that's still no mans land
The countless white crosses in mute witness stand
To man's blind indifference to his fellow man
And a whole generation were butchered and damned

Did they beat the drums slowly
Did they play the fife lowly
Did the rifles fire o'er you as they lowered you down
Did the band play the last post and chorus
Did the pipes play the flowers of the forest

And I can't help but wonder oh Willy McBride
Do all those who lie here know why they died
Did you really believe them when they told you the cause
Did you really believe that this war would end wars
Well the suffering, the sorrow, the glory, the shame
The killing and dying it was all done in vain
Oh Willy McBride it all happened again
And again, and again, and again, and again

Did they beat the drums slowly
Did they play the fife lowly
Did the rifles fire o'er you as they lowered you down
Did the band play the last post and chorus
Did the pipes play the flowers of the forest

I'm not sure this link will work, i've had some problems with it. However, the CBC is doing a series of archival recordings of veterans of the Great War describing their experiences:

The Bugle and the Passing Bell

The Ivor Novello World War I hit, sung by John McCormack:

I nice collections of art during (and just before) the war ... as seen (mainly) by German artists:
Art of the First World War

In the neighbour-town the local art museum presents from today onwards a special exhibition with mostly never shown œuvres by Peter August Böckstiegel (1889-1951). He was a regionally known painter. At the beginning of 1915, Böckstiegel was drafted for military service, didn't show much enthusiasm but continued painting (mainly watercolours). In these paintings, he neither showed heroism nor the most tragic sides but mainly the 'normal' life of soldiers and people in Russia, Poland, Belarus ...

Yea! Thay put u in jail; some nerve!
Y shud u be loyal to THAT ?